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Leadership in homeland touches a nerve in Cambodian-Americans

By Grant Welker, gwelker@lowellsun.com

Updated:
04/03/2016 08:49:27 AM EDT

Hun Manet, the son of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, is shown during an interview in Washington in January. A planned April 16 visit to Lowell drew a protest by hundreds of Cambodian-Americans last week, compelling city councilors to withdraw an invitation to meet with him at City Hall.
AP FILE PHOTO

LOWELL -- Recent days have provided a crash-course in the important role overseas Cambodian politics still plays with so many in Lowell.

A few hundred Cambodian-Americans in Lowell protested last week against a planned visit by Hun Manet, a top-ranking Cambodian national military official and son of the prime minister, compelling Lowell city councilors to withdraw an invitation to meet with him at City Hall later this month.

Two academic experts on Cambodia and a freelance journalist who recently wrote a book about Cambodia under Hun Sen, who has ruled the Communist nation for 30 years, said they weren't surprised to see the opposition to Manet's visit, given the sentiment so many U.S. Cambodians feel toward the government back home.

"The Cambodian diaspora has always been a hotbed of anti-(Cambodian People's Party) sentiment, and has provided significant financial backing for opposition parties inside Cambodia," said Sebastian Strangio, the author of "Hun Sen's Cambodia."

The ruling party has been "engaging in a charm offensive" in Cambodian communities abroad in recent years, Strangio said. "What does surprise me is that the Cambodian government didn't see this coming. Did they really think that the Khmericans in Lowell would roll out the red carpet for Manet?"

Alex Hinton agreed. He is a Rutgers University professor who has closely studied Cambodia and directs the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights.

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"If it didn't happen, I would be more surprised," he said of the uproar.

There has also been more support in Cambodia for the opposition, too, in recent years, said Tracy Harachi, a University of Washington professor who started the first social work department in Cambodia in 2008.

"People do seem to be speaking out more about their concerns, and questions about the current ruling party," she said.

A Cambodian government spokesman responded to the Lowell City Council's vote last week to the Phnom Penh Post.

Phay Siphan accused the council of politicizing what should have been a unifying occasion, and condemned the vote as "an uncivilized act," the Post said.

"They do not have any argument," Siphan told the newspaper in an online report. "They are against their own principles of democracy and open society."

Just last week, a United Nations human-rights envoy warned that Cambodia was nearing a "dangerous tipping point" with national elections in 2018, urging the country to make elections fair and prevent threats and violence.

Cambodia also recently received poor marks across the board by Transparency International, a group that tracks government corruption. The country ranks 150th out of 168 countries that were studied for corruption, and its budget openness was rated "scant or none."

In 2014, Transparency International warned of ongoing corruption but said there was "no doubt" that Cambodian lives improved in the past two decades, with a stronger economy and better health and less poverty for residents.

Strangio also cited some strides the country has made, including the longest period of peace and political stability in modern Cambodian history, a free English-language press and a large and vocal civil society.

"But the only reason these freedoms have been retained is because they simply don't affect fundamental political and economic interests," he wrote in an email from Laos.

"As soon as they do, the state quickly closes the vice. What you end up with, then, is a mirage of democratic institutions and multi-party politics concealing an old-style patrimonial state with Hun Sen at its apex."

There is also a long way to go in terms of public perception. In a 2013 survey of Cambodian residents conducted by Transparency International, 60 percent said the judicial system was corrupt or extremely corrupt, with about 30 percent saying the same about public officials and political parties.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of State said the department raises concerns about human rights and rule of law at every opportunity, including when Secretary of State John Kerry visited Cambodia in January.

"The situation in Cambodia has improved somewhat in recent months but significant challenges remain," said the spokeswoman, Julia Mason. "We urge the Cambodian government to seek to create a more just society and improve its commitment to democracy and human rights."

The paranoia some said they felt of Manet and his delegation visiting Lowell made sense to those who know the Cambodian government well.

During the Khmer Rouge regime, there was a saying of "Angka has the eyes of a pineapple," Harachi said, meaning the government had eyes and ears everywhere.

Hun Manet has been speculated by some to be his father's heir apparent. Critics in Lowell said that Manet has not distanced himself from or denounced his father's record. Manet was educated at the U.S. Military Academy and has been rising rapidly through the ranks of the Cambodian military, now at lieutenant general.

But "it's impossible to know for sure" whether Manet would be next in line as prime minister, Hinton said. Strangio agreed, but added: "It's a fair guess Hun Sen will try to enshrine his legacy in some sort of family dynasty."

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